For advanced users, Windows 7 just plain WORKS BETTER than XP, on pretty much every level. I'm not sure how you can possibly say otherwise.
OK here's just a few examples:
1) In my original post, I gave an example of a problem I had with Windows 7 search. Care to show how to get Windows 7 search to work in that case?
Here is the problem again: say you have a directory called ABC. In that directory there are many text files. A few of them contain the word ABC. The rest don't. Using the Windows 7 search how do you find those few files that contain the word ABC while excluding the files that don't?
Worse, even in less problematic cases, the index often gets out of date, so it finds a file that doesn't have the word ABC in it, or it only finds some of them not all... It basically cannot be relied on.
2) In Windows XP I can set things up so that I can launch/do different things with just a few key strokes. I need more key strokes to do that with Windows 7. How I do it on XP? I switch to classic mode. Then create folders in the start menu and name them stuff like
So to explore the my desktop I would press winkey, 1, 1. To Explore My Documents I would press winkey, 1, 3. winkey, 1, c for C drive. winkey, 1, F for F drive. To launch the windows calculator, I would press winkey, 2, c. To launch an app I would press winkey, 3, To connect to my home server I would press winkey, 7, 1. To connect to my firewall I would press winkey, 7, 6.
To set this up on a new XP system, I just copy the relevant folders over, and voila it works (the app paths may have to be tweaked of course).
In comparison, the Windows 7 start menu search often requires me to type winkey, ENTIRE FIRST WORD of the app I need to launch - partial match doesn't always work. Furthermore the Windows 7 taskbar pinning thing only allows you to quick launch a max of 10 (or is it 9?) different items (winkey+number).
3) On Win XP I can just right click on a task button I want to close and press C. You need more steps/keys to do a similar thing on Windows 7- the fancy way even requires you to wait for the GUI to pop stuff up first, the alternative is left click on taskbutton, alt+f4 (but that's more keys, a greater stretch and slower:) ).
So Windows 7 is slower for me and I see no way of getting it to do stuff at the same speed as I have on XP.
I would be very happy if you can actually show me how to get windows 7 to do things faster or better than I do on XP.
Most new Windows 7 users are unaware that many of the short cuts already exist for Windows XP. Windows XP also has a lot of short cuts and key strokes, and as my "2)" example shows, you can make your own customized short cuts.
For quick switching amongst more than two different tasks/windows I use my own program (LinkKey http://sourceforge.net/projects/linkkey/ ) whether on XP or Win7.
alt-tab works fine for switching between two windows. Not so well if you need to quickly switch amongst four or more.
I think Goldberg's drawings reminded his contemporaries of a time when they could understand the world's industrial processes just by looking
I think predict would be a more accurate description. Understanding is not the same as prediction, though it helps make better predictions.
I could could predict that something would fall in a certain scenario even though I don't understand much about gravity. Most of us nerds aren't satisfied with mere prediction, we seek understanding (which helps us make better predictions). But "normal" people don't care that much about understanding stuff, they are happy with just being able to predict stuff. So keep the windows and icons in the same places and they will be happy that they can repeat the same steps to get their stuff done.
So yes, from the electrical age to the computer age many things have become less predictable. A live wire that's deadly could look the same as one that has no electricity flowing in it.
But in the US anyway, flip a switch and you can turn the lights on fairly predictably. More predictably than gathering firewood, starting your own fire from a "magical match" or even a flint (do normal people actually understand how matches work?), or being able to get enough tallow to make your own candles for the night.
And for advanced users Windows XP often works BETTER than Win 7.
Windows 7 search doesn't work for me. It doesn't find stuff, or makes it hard/impossible to find stuff. I actually resorted to using grep on Win 7. I never had to do that with Win XP. With Windows XP even though the search was slow, if the stuff was there you'd eventually find it. For example: if you have a stuff in a directory that's named "XYZ" and you wanted to find files that had the text "XYZ" in them you could do it with XP, but with Windows 7, you'd get lots of files that didn't contain XYZ but show up because they are in the XYZ directory.
Win 7 works well for "normal" users. But for "advanced" users it really doesn't help, except perhaps the clustering of task buttons (you can uncombine related tasks/windows and still have them clustered together), and individual sound controls for apps, in many cases it actually gets in the way (search being an example).
The 4kb nonaligned stuff is a minus for XP, but "advanced" users can fix that.
I suppose Win 7 does IPv6 better? But IMO since IPv6 is still a mess in _practice_ (DNS, routing etc all have issues because of the ivory tower geniuses or "corporate pet interests") it's not a big advantage.
Desktop Linux? They can't seem to get basic stuff like sound working. Maybe they have recently, but wait a few months and they might break it again:). Same goes for the GUI. They don't have Steven Jobs's Reality Distortion field (or sense of taste) but they still insist on regularly moving stuff around for not good enough reasons.
They're a real commercial product, it's just that the factory output is booked years in advance.
What we need then is for the evil Chinese to copy or buy the technology, and start making zillions of them in Shenzen or wherever they make those sort of stuff.
The regulators rolled back the trades. So in the big picture that was not a loss for the HFT traders.
HFT Trader: "Mommy, make Timmy give back what I lost to him". Timmy: "He was trying to trick me with fancy fast bids, but he screwed up and lost". Mommy: "Timmy, you have to give HFT Trader back his money".
Now, since this was a malfunction, the people who lost 90% instantly and the people in the other side of those trades who made 80% did so by foul play. The flash crash trades were busted (market regulators ordered them undone) and the world went on like this never happened.
So when their programs work and they make a profit they get to keep it, and when their program doesn't work and they make a big loss they don't get to keep their losses?
That's nice. I'd love to have the regulators step in for me when I lose big on the stock market too.
So it's even more unfair that when they lose big because of THEIR bug, the regulators roll back their mistakes. That's what I call foul play.
Now if it was a bug in the stock exchange software or system itself, then sure you have to roll things back. But a bug in your fancy trading programs? Too fucking bad, eat your losses and die - don't all these free market capitalists always say let the companies that screw up die?
In fact, I would listen even less to someone who attempts to use the deaths of soldiers as a vehicle to impose censorship and economic sanctions on others.
5) slaughter livestock, grind up by products, then feed to other livestock.
That bit also happens unhygienically - very often the animal feces and bacteria get splattered everywhere contaminating the meat.
Then the consumers are told to cook everything properly, and if stuff happens, it's the consumer's fault, not agribusiness fault...
I've heard of a case where they dunk all the chicken in the same water after removing the feathers, and naturally that mixes and spreads all the bacteria and gunk from all chickens...
I used to play customtf a lot... Even though I often had 700ms ping. One of my fav classes was medic pyro with speed+bunny hop jumps.
The autoaim cheats got annoying though. You know they are cheating when they can snipe you when you run and jump off a ledge, but keep missing you when you stand right in front of them and jiggle left and right very quickly- not actually moving from the spot, just jiggling:).
I found it mildly interesting that the autoaimer didn't have an averaging or manual option... Either that or the guy was clueless.
Actually the OP's right. In my experience for many pages, I'm not waiting for the content to load, I'm actually waiting for some ad/tracker site's 1x1 tracking pixel, or banner ad or javascript crap[1], or css or whatever.
That's why noscript and adblock can make certain sites so much faster. You only depend on one site working properly to see the page you want.
Whereas without the blocking, in order to see the page you depend on multiple sites (and their ISPs) to work properly.
Sure the 1x1 tracking pixel is an image, but the fact it's taking time to load is not because it's gif, png, jpg or webp.
[1] FWIW Slashdot takes a lot longer to load when I turn on javascript.
But the purpose of many slashdot summaries seem to be to generate more comments about errors in the summary, or due to misunderstanding of the summary, or the summary just being crap. A bit like trolling for hits;).
That only works if you can easily judge the submissions on face value. If it was possible to do that well and fast, the US Patent Office wouldn't be having its current problem.
As I said, doing it in hindsight is easier. Plus if your invention is so ahead of its time that it takes 40 years to get finally get recognition, you could still win the prize (hopefully not posthumously:) ).
Just spread some rumour to the Chinese that the rare "Guam strain" is good for erectile dysfunction, "general health" or whatever, and it'll soon be close enough to extinction.;).
Maybe you should take the trouble to read completely and understand what he wrote before replying piecemeal.
Because it's funny how you say he's talking "utter bullshit" when you say:
I did some experiments a few weeks ago with IPv6. You know what? Most things just work.
And you then also say:
You can't route IPv6 packets directly to IPv4 addresses. The idea is absurd: how can a machine that only talks IPv4 reply to such a packet?
Because that's EXACTLY the problem DJB was talking about: "Right now, many---in fact, most---Internet servers can't talk to clients on public IPv6 addresses."
Then you follow up with:
DJB: "As of 2002.11, Google hasn't published IPv6 addresses for www.google.com" OK, so the rant is probably nearly 8 years out of date. FTR, google.com is accessible through IPv6, as I believe are all the other specific examples of sites DJB quotes that were not IPv6 enabled at the time of writing.
His rant wasn't 8 years out of date, because only in 2008 did Google's search engine start to support IPv6: http://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/ Furthermore they only added support for the other stuff later.
So 3 years ago, if you only had an IPv6 address and no IPv4 addresses, you couldn't use Google. Not being able to use Google (or the other search engines for that matter) would have been a major problem to many people. If it took Google that long to add IPv6 support, guess how long it'll take for the rest of the servers to add IPv6 addresses?
If the "only have IPv6 address" scenario does not apply to you and you have an IPv4 address, then naturally you don't have the problem. But is "everyone sharing IPv4 addresses to talk to servers" considered an official migration path to IPv6?
Too many IPv6 proponents don't appear to be living in the real world. So it's no surprise when many people ignore them and their "ivory tower plans".
My prediction on what will actually happen is ISPs will put more and more users behind IPv4 NATs. Because going from IPv6 only to IPv4 only will require some form of proxying/NATing anyway, so if the ISPs are going to do that, they might as well stick with IPv4 proxying/NATing technologies which are more tested and proven.
This won't affect the WoW users, or the grandmas who use web, or those playing farmville on Facebook. But it would certainly affect those using P2P, and those running their own servers. So the users who want a public IPv4 address will have to pay more $$$.
The ISPs and Big Media (who own or are linked to many ISPs) are likely to consider this a feature and not a bug. After all many big corps tend to prefer a world where only a few can talk and the rest have to listen. So their motivation to move to IPv6 might not be so high.
Not necessarily, because if they implemented ideas, they would likely infringe on other people's patents.
For example, say you hold 3 patents. If you don't do anything and just wait for someone like IBM to infringe, you can sue them and get $$$.
However if you actually try to make something, you might infringe on one or more patents of the tens of thousands in IBM's patent portfolio. So you might have to cross license, maybe even pay IBM more than IBM pays you.
In which case you might not make as much money per capital invested for the risk you take.
So the patent system actually encourages many people/companies to try to patent a vague loose description of a useful idea and then just sit on it, rather than actually build stuff to help society.
And it also encourages the rest to patent lots of crap in defense against each other (doesn't work against the trolls). Not very good for innovation. And overall it just ends up being an unnecessary tax on society. Useless friction on the wheels of progress etc.
Ideas are easy. Many of us here can come up with lots of ideas. The difficulty is getting them done.
Plagiarism on the other hand is something different. So to me it's fine for you to copy someone, but you should not claim you are the first if you aren't - that would be lying (and if it's lying for gain it's fraud).
To me if you wanted to encourage innovation, you could have Prizes for Innovation. These would be judged in hindsight (hindsight is easier right?). You could have many different categories, and two classes of prizes - one judged by the Public and one by Experts in the Field.
So even if the expert snobs think your invention sucks, if the Public think your invention is good, you still could win a prize.
Yes it's not a billion dollar bonanza but neither are Nobel Prizes, and still many regard those as prestigious.
The bird DNA isn't 'making' the virus. In fact, the viruses are not coding for proteins due to numerous mutations that hit that part of the genome over time. Since the DNA is silent, the mutations don't affect anything and there is no selection for an active virus (or active anything).
Apparently some viruses can insert themselves into the germline/genome and reactivate later:
The team presented clear evidence that the virus can insert its DNA specifically into telomeres -- structures at the ends of each chromosome that play key roles in both aging and cancer.
Finally, the team showed that the chromosomally integrated HHV-6 (CIHHV-6) genomes can be reactivated to an infectious form.
What annoys me more is 1000+ articles about the same thing, and many of which are just advert/blog pages with a summary that points to the article (or worse they don't even point anywhere useful).
Just build space stations humans can live and successfully reproduce in.
You can create "artificial gravity" by using rotation - either the whole station or part of it.
To me working on this would be a better idea than sending humans to Mars or even the Moon.
Once you have worked out how to build a viable space station/colony, going to Mars etc isn't such a big problem.
And Mars wouldn't actually be as interesting in terms of resources - there's plenty of raw material in the asteroid belts, for which you don't have to fight a huge gravity well to get.
Yes. You often don't need language to observe, predict and then make decisions.
Animals can think without language. Humans do it very often too - when driving a car or playing nonlanguage related video games, most people use a different thought mode.
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For advanced users, Windows 7 just plain WORKS BETTER than XP, on pretty much every level. I'm not sure how you can possibly say otherwise.
OK here's just a few examples:
1) In my original post, I gave an example of a problem I had with Windows 7 search. Care to show how to get Windows 7 search to work in that case?
Here is the problem again: say you have a directory called ABC. In that directory there are many text files. A few of them contain the word ABC. The rest don't. Using the Windows 7 search how do you find those few files that contain the word ABC while excluding the files that don't?
Worse, even in less problematic cases, the index often gets out of date, so it finds a file that doesn't have the word ABC in it, or it only finds some of them not all... It basically cannot be relied on.
2) In Windows XP I can set things up so that I can launch/do different things with just a few key strokes. I need more key strokes to do that with Windows 7. How I do it on XP? I switch to classic mode. Then create folders in the start menu and name them stuff like
"1 Explore" ...
"2 Tools"
"3 Launch"
"4 Command Prompt"
"7 Connect to"
So to explore the my desktop I would press winkey, 1, 1. To Explore My Documents I would press winkey, 1, 3. winkey, 1, c for C drive. winkey, 1, F for F drive.
To launch the windows calculator, I would press winkey, 2, c.
To launch an app I would press winkey, 3,
To connect to my home server I would press winkey, 7, 1. To connect to my firewall I would press winkey, 7, 6.
To set this up on a new XP system, I just copy the relevant folders over, and voila it works (the app paths may have to be tweaked of course).
In comparison, the Windows 7 start menu search often requires me to type winkey, ENTIRE FIRST WORD of the app I need to launch - partial match doesn't always work. Furthermore the Windows 7 taskbar pinning thing only allows you to quick launch a max of 10 (or is it 9?) different items (winkey+number).
3) On Win XP I can just right click on a task button I want to close and press C. You need more steps/keys to do a similar thing on Windows 7- the fancy way even requires you to wait for the GUI to pop stuff up first, the alternative is left click on taskbutton, alt+f4 (but that's more keys, a greater stretch and slower :) ).
So Windows 7 is slower for me and I see no way of getting it to do stuff at the same speed as I have on XP.
I would be very happy if you can actually show me how to get windows 7 to do things faster or better than I do on XP.
Most new Windows 7 users are unaware that many of the short cuts already exist for Windows XP. Windows XP also has a lot of short cuts and key strokes, and as my "2)" example shows, you can make your own customized short cuts.
For quick switching amongst more than two different tasks/windows I use my own program (LinkKey http://sourceforge.net/projects/linkkey/ ) whether on XP or Win7.
alt-tab works fine for switching between two windows. Not so well if you need to quickly switch amongst four or more.
I think Goldberg's drawings reminded his contemporaries of a time when they could understand the world's industrial processes just by looking
I think predict would be a more accurate description. Understanding is not the same as prediction, though it helps make better predictions.
I could could predict that something would fall in a certain scenario even though I don't understand much about gravity. Most of us nerds aren't satisfied with mere prediction, we seek understanding (which helps us make better predictions). But "normal" people don't care that much about understanding stuff, they are happy with just being able to predict stuff. So keep the windows and icons in the same places and they will be happy that they can repeat the same steps to get their stuff done.
So yes, from the electrical age to the computer age many things have become less predictable. A live wire that's deadly could look the same as one that has no electricity flowing in it.
But in the US anyway, flip a switch and you can turn the lights on fairly predictably. More predictably than gathering firewood, starting your own fire from a "magical match" or even a flint (do normal people actually understand how matches work?), or being able to get enough tallow to make your own candles for the night.
So other things have become more predictable.
And for advanced users Windows XP often works BETTER than Win 7.
:). Same goes for the GUI. They don't have Steven Jobs's Reality Distortion field (or sense of taste) but they still insist on regularly moving stuff around for not good enough reasons.
Windows 7 search doesn't work for me. It doesn't find stuff, or makes it hard/impossible to find stuff. I actually resorted to using grep on Win 7. I never had to do that with Win XP. With Windows XP even though the search was slow, if the stuff was there you'd eventually find it. For example: if you have a stuff in a directory that's named "XYZ" and you wanted to find files that had the text "XYZ" in them you could do it with XP, but with Windows 7, you'd get lots of files that didn't contain XYZ but show up because they are in the XYZ directory.
Win 7 works well for "normal" users. But for "advanced" users it really doesn't help, except perhaps the clustering of task buttons (you can uncombine related tasks/windows and still have them clustered together), and individual sound controls for apps, in many cases it actually gets in the way (search being an example).
The 4kb nonaligned stuff is a minus for XP, but "advanced" users can fix that.
I suppose Win 7 does IPv6 better? But IMO since IPv6 is still a mess in _practice_ (DNS, routing etc all have issues because of the ivory tower geniuses or "corporate pet interests") it's not a big advantage.
Desktop Linux? They can't seem to get basic stuff like sound working. Maybe they have recently, but wait a few months and they might break it again
They're a real commercial product, it's just that the factory output is booked years in advance.
What we need then is for the evil Chinese to copy or buy the technology, and start making zillions of them in Shenzen or wherever they make those sort of stuff.
There are already millions of electric bikes in use in China: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1904334,00.html
They're also planning to build more than 100 nuclear reactors. If they succeed that might help clear up the smog in their cities.
Say what you like about their Gov, but they appear to have a long term plan that might actually work.
The regulators rolled back the trades. So in the big picture that was not a loss for the HFT traders.
HFT Trader: "Mommy, make Timmy give back what I lost to him".
Timmy: "He was trying to trick me with fancy fast bids, but he screwed up and lost".
Mommy: "Timmy, you have to give HFT Trader back his money".
Greed 1, Justice 0.
Now, since this was a malfunction, the people who lost 90% instantly and the people in the other side of those trades who made 80% did so by foul play. The flash crash trades were busted (market regulators ordered them undone) and the world went on like this never happened.
So when their programs work and they make a profit they get to keep it, and when their program doesn't work and they make a big loss they don't get to keep their losses?
That's nice. I'd love to have the regulators step in for me when I lose big on the stock market too.
The fact is many firms are already cheating in so many ways: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/24/business/24trading.html (basically front running and other cheating techniques by other names).
So it's even more unfair that when they lose big because of THEIR bug, the regulators roll back their mistakes. That's what I call foul play.
Now if it was a bug in the stock exchange software or system itself, then sure you have to roll things back. But a bug in your fancy trading programs? Too fucking bad, eat your losses and die - don't all these free market capitalists always say let the companies that screw up die?
No wonder so many virgin slashdotters choose Linux...
In fact, I would listen even less to someone who attempts to use the deaths of soldiers as a vehicle to impose censorship and economic sanctions on others.
Like various US presidents and their friends? :)
What do you expect? They're frigging Nazis.
5) slaughter livestock, grind up by products, then feed to other livestock.
That bit also happens unhygienically - very often the animal feces and bacteria get splattered everywhere contaminating the meat.
Then the consumers are told to cook everything properly, and if stuff happens, it's the consumer's fault, not agribusiness fault...
I've heard of a case where they dunk all the chicken in the same water after removing the feathers, and naturally that mixes and spreads all the bacteria and gunk from all chickens...
I used to play customtf a lot... Even though I often had 700ms ping. One of my fav classes was medic pyro with speed+bunny hop jumps.
:).
The autoaim cheats got annoying though. You know they are cheating when they can snipe you when you run and jump off a ledge, but keep missing you when you stand right in front of them and jiggle left and right very quickly- not actually moving from the spot, just jiggling
I found it mildly interesting that the autoaimer didn't have an averaging or manual option... Either that or the guy was clueless.
Search for: Jay Leno jet bike.
Yep, he has a jet bike, and it can melt bumpers...
Actually the OP's right. In my experience for many pages, I'm not waiting for the content to load, I'm actually waiting for some ad/tracker site's 1x1 tracking pixel, or banner ad or javascript crap[1], or css or whatever.
That's why noscript and adblock can make certain sites so much faster. You only depend on one site working properly to see the page you want.
Whereas without the blocking, in order to see the page you depend on multiple sites (and their ISPs) to work properly.
Sure the 1x1 tracking pixel is an image, but the fact it's taking time to load is not because it's gif, png, jpg or webp.
[1] FWIW Slashdot takes a lot longer to load when I turn on javascript.
I think he's the sort who'd ban motorcycle helmets for people who are younger than 25 or so...
;).
Maybe have them fill out organ donor forms too, even if its to say "Not donating".
Yes his summary was a bit long.
;).
But the purpose of many slashdot summaries seem to be to generate more comments about errors in the summary, or due to misunderstanding of the summary, or the summary just being crap. A bit like trolling for hits
That only works if you can easily judge the submissions on face value. If it was possible to do that well and fast, the US Patent Office wouldn't be having its current problem.
:) ).
As I said, doing it in hindsight is easier. Plus if your invention is so ahead of its time that it takes 40 years to get finally get recognition, you could still win the prize (hopefully not posthumously
Better Collins than Jar Jar...
Just spread some rumour to the Chinese that the rare "Guam strain" is good for erectile dysfunction, "general health" or whatever, and it'll soon be close enough to extinction. ;).
Maybe you should take the trouble to read completely and understand what he wrote before replying piecemeal.
Because it's funny how you say he's talking "utter bullshit" when you say:
I did some experiments a few weeks ago with IPv6. You know what? Most things just work.
And you then also say:
You can't route IPv6 packets directly to IPv4 addresses. The idea is absurd: how can a machine that only talks IPv4 reply to such a packet?
Because that's EXACTLY the problem DJB was talking about: "Right now, many---in fact, most---Internet servers can't talk to clients on public IPv6 addresses."
Then you follow up with:
DJB: "As of 2002.11, Google hasn't published IPv6 addresses for www.google.com"
OK, so the rant is probably nearly 8 years out of date. FTR, google.com is accessible through IPv6, as I believe are all the other specific examples of sites DJB quotes that were not IPv6 enabled at the time of writing.
His rant wasn't 8 years out of date, because only in 2008 did Google's search engine start to support IPv6: http://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/
Furthermore they only added support for the other stuff later.
So 3 years ago, if you only had an IPv6 address and no IPv4 addresses, you couldn't use Google. Not being able to use Google (or the other search engines for that matter) would have been a major problem to many people. If it took Google that long to add IPv6 support, guess how long it'll take for the rest of the servers to add IPv6 addresses?
If the "only have IPv6 address" scenario does not apply to you and you have an IPv4 address, then naturally you don't have the problem. But is "everyone sharing IPv4 addresses to talk to servers" considered an official migration path to IPv6?
Too many IPv6 proponents don't appear to be living in the real world. So it's no surprise when many people ignore them and their "ivory tower plans".
My prediction on what will actually happen is ISPs will put more and more users behind IPv4 NATs. Because going from IPv6 only to IPv4 only will require some form of proxying/NATing anyway, so if the ISPs are going to do that, they might as well stick with IPv4 proxying/NATing technologies which are more tested and proven.
This won't affect the WoW users, or the grandmas who use web, or those playing farmville on Facebook. But it would certainly affect those using P2P, and those running their own servers. So the users who want a public IPv4 address will have to pay more $$$.
The ISPs and Big Media (who own or are linked to many ISPs) are likely to consider this a feature and not a bug. After all many big corps tend to prefer a world where only a few can talk and the rest have to listen. So their motivation to move to IPv6 might not be so high.
Not necessarily, because if they implemented ideas, they would likely infringe on other people's patents.
For example, say you hold 3 patents. If you don't do anything and just wait for someone like IBM to infringe, you can sue them and get $$$.
However if you actually try to make something, you might infringe on one or more patents of the tens of thousands in IBM's patent portfolio. So you might have to cross license, maybe even pay IBM more than IBM pays you.
In which case you might not make as much money per capital invested for the risk you take.
So the patent system actually encourages many people/companies to try to patent a vague loose description of a useful idea and then just sit on it, rather than actually build stuff to help society.
And it also encourages the rest to patent lots of crap in defense against each other (doesn't work against the trolls). Not very good for innovation. And overall it just ends up being an unnecessary tax on society. Useless friction on the wheels of progress etc.
Ideas are easy. Many of us here can come up with lots of ideas. The difficulty is getting them done.
Plagiarism on the other hand is something different. So to me it's fine for you to copy someone, but you should not claim you are the first if you aren't - that would be lying (and if it's lying for gain it's fraud).
To me if you wanted to encourage innovation, you could have Prizes for Innovation. These would be judged in hindsight (hindsight is easier right?). You could have many different categories, and two classes of prizes - one judged by the Public and one by Experts in the Field.
So even if the expert snobs think your invention sucks, if the Public think your invention is good, you still could win a prize.
Yes it's not a billion dollar bonanza but neither are Nobel Prizes, and still many regard those as prestigious.
The bird DNA isn't 'making' the virus. In fact, the viruses are not coding for proteins due to numerous mutations that hit that part of the genome over time. Since the DNA is silent, the mutations don't affect anything and there is no selection for an active virus (or active anything).
Apparently some viruses can insert themselves into the germline/genome and reactivate later:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100308151055.htm
The team presented clear evidence that the virus can insert its DNA specifically into telomeres -- structures at the ends of each chromosome that play key roles in both aging and cancer.
Finally, the team showed that the chromosomally integrated HHV-6 (CIHHV-6) genomes can be reactivated to an infectious form.
More details here:
http://schaechter.asmblog.org/schaechter/2010/08/when-the-end-is-the-story.html
What annoys me more is 1000+ articles about the same thing, and many of which are just advert/blog pages with a summary that points to the article (or worse they don't even point anywhere useful).
Just build space stations humans can live and successfully reproduce in.
You can create "artificial gravity" by using rotation - either the whole station or part of it.
To me working on this would be a better idea than sending humans to Mars or even the Moon.
Once you have worked out how to build a viable space station/colony, going to Mars etc isn't such a big problem.
And Mars wouldn't actually be as interesting in terms of resources - there's plenty of raw material in the asteroid belts, for which you don't have to fight a huge gravity well to get.
Would Siemens using Linux instead of Windows even make a difference?
After all Siemens has advised customers not to change the default passwords in their product: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-20011095-83.html
Can thought exist without language?
Yes. You often don't need language to observe, predict and then make decisions.
Animals can think without language. Humans do it very often too - when driving a car or playing nonlanguage related video games, most people use a different thought mode.